


Out of the Cold

by Sholio



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blankets, Cold Weather, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 08:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2540882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a bit of pointless fluff -- my version of the "Steve and Bucky can't get warm after 70 years frozen" fic trope. For my h/c bingo "abuse" square. (Aftermath of past abuse/trauma, not abuse occurring in the present day.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kriadydragon as part of my Halloween ficlet offer.

It took Steve awhile to notice how much Bucky hated being cold. As with almost everything else that bothered him, physically and otherwise, Bucky didn't talk about it and -- this was more of a problem, really -- refused to permit the weakness to show where others, even Steve, could see it. He'd once come back from a mission with a broken right arm, and had kept it hidden throughout the post-mission briefing and all the way back to the apartment he shared with Steve. Steve was pretty sure he never _would_ have known if he hadn't playfully nudged Bucky on the way up the stairs to the apartment and happened to put enough torque on Bucky's broken forearm to startle a gasp out of him. Steve had felt like shit about it for days, even though he knew Bucky hadn't _wanted_ him to know. He could imagine all too easily how it would have gone down if he hadn't figured it out -- Bucky would have ducked off and shut himself in his room as soon as they were inside the apartment (slinking off even though he had to have been as hungry as Steve was) and by morning the bone would've knit enough that he could have faked his way through the next day or two. And he would've been all alone and in pain and starving ....

Once the cat was out of the bag, Bucky had sat passively for Steve to splint and wrap it (aside from a couple of token protests that it would heal up just fine anyway). Steve had fed him some of the heavy-duty painkillers that Bruce had hooked them up with, and then heated up a few cans of Campbell's soup for both of them. It didn't end up feeling _that_ different from when one or the other of them had been hurt when they were street rats in Brooklyn. It was just that Bucky was downright pathological about giving that kind of thing away. He'd always been closed off about things that hurt him, but not like this, never like this.

And it wasn't that Steve didn't know what had made Bucky that way. He just had to force himself not to think about it, because all the people who had done it were dead, and it wasn't like he could dig up Pierce's corpse to shoot him a few more times.

(Though there were definitely times when it would have been cathartic.)

Steve's worst nightmare was that Bucky would get really badly hurt and wouldn't admit it, to the point where he'd bleed out in the middle of a fight because he'd just keep fighting until it was too late. So far, though, it was mostly just little matters of personal comfort. He wouldn't admit to being hungry or tired or unhappy, and Steve tried to train himself to pick up on the tiniest tells so that he could figure out whether Bucky was getting overstimulated in a social gathering and needed to go home, or pick up on whether Bucky had eaten that day.

Which was how he figured out the cold thing. It was something that probably wouldn't have occurred to him if he hadn't had similar problems himself, because ever since Steve had known him, Bucky had always run hot. Back when they were kids, Bucky ran around without a hat or gloves in the nastiest weather (to their mothers' mutual despair) and even during the war, he'd seemed relatively comfortable in weather that made the rest of them miserable. Steve, on the other hand, never quite got over his childhood dread of winter and his misery in the cold, even after he was six feet tall and had a hyper-fast metabolism that meant the cold shouldn't have been able to touch him. He'd mostly managed to push it aside during the war, if only because he had bigger concerns (like being shot at) and he'd also been well aware that the best winter gear needed to go to the people who weren't frostbite-proof. But it came back with a vengeance after he got out of the ice. It wasn't a physical thing; it was just that he found himself reaching for sweaters when the weather got cold, or wanting to curl up with his hands wrapped around a cup of cocoa.

Bucky was incredibly subtle about it, as with all things these days, but Steve noticed Bucky doing some of the same things that _he_ did -- picking the chair closest to the radiator or sitting in a sunbeam, for example. Sometimes when Bucky thought no one was looking, Steve might catch him sliding his right hand down against his leg to warm it. When it came to household chores, Bucky liked doing dishes and he liked cooking -- which, not incidentally, were tasks that let him immerse his hands in hot water or hover over the stove.

There wasn't a lot Steve could do about it without being obvious. He did the best he could: cranking the heat in the apartment a couple degrees higher than usual (which was more comfortable for him, too), making sure Bucky got the first cup of hot coffee or cocoa after missions, and so forth. He saw to it that there were cozy, fluffy afghans and lap blankets stashed around the living spaces of the apartment and that Bucky had warm blankets on his bed.

The point where he cracked and gave himself away was one afternoon when a somber December rain was ghosting across the windows. Steve had the heat in the apartment cranked, but it didn't seem to be making any difference -- at least, it didn't feel like it to him, which meant Bucky was probably feeling it too ... the low-grade chill that seeped into his bones and cored him out from the inside. Steve was reading on the couch and Bucky was watching some kind of nature channel on TV. Slowly, over the course of a couple of hours, Bucky -- who was wearing a thin T-shirt and bare-armed -- had burrowed deeper and deeper into the chair where he was sitting, but he made no move to reach for any of the fluffy blankets ever-so-casually stashed on couch backs and other nearby items of furniture. Steve even got up a couple of times to get himself a drink or go to the bathroom, just in case it might be easier for Bucky to wrap himself up if Steve wasn't in the room, but he just _wouldn't._

The worst part was that Bucky wasn't giving off miserable vibes in any obvious way. He wasn't curled into a freezing-cold ball or even hunched over in particular. But Steve was pretty sure that Bucky was forcing himself _not_ to do something like that from sheer force of will, and when he came back from the bathroom for the second time to find Bucky still T-shirt-clad and staring fixedly at the TV, Steve had had it. He went into the kitchen and fixed the two of them cocoa in the biggest cups they owned, with cinnamon and the last of the whipped cream that Sam had brought along with a strawberry pie a few nights ago. He set one cup in front of Bucky and then picked up the nearest fluffy blanket and draped it over Bucky's shoulders.

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve and gazed at him for a long moment, making no move to burrow into the blanket or pull it tighter around his shoulders, before he finally said, "You're such a jerk. Don't think I haven't noticed what you're doing."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Steve said, and went back to his book. When he peeked carefully over the top of the book a few minutes later, he found that Bucky had given up and snuggled down into the blanket with his cup of cocoa tangled between his flesh and metal fingers. If he caught Steve looking at him -- which he almost certainly did -- he didn't acknowledge it and kept staring directly at the TV. Steve ducked his head back down and tried to pay attention to his book.

Steve eventually lost himself in the story so thoroughly that he didn't notice Bucky get up -- though, granted, Bucky was pretty stealthy about that sort of thing -- until something soft landed on his shoulders. Steve jumped and looked up, over the pile of fluffy blanket that had just been dumped on _him_ , at Bucky sitting back down in his own chair and slowly, deliberately working himself back into the blanket cocoon he'd left behind, all the while giving Steve a challenging scowl.

Steve meekly wrapped himself up too. Bucky, looking satisfied in his quiet way, tucked his legs up under him, turning himself into a blanket-wrapped ball, and went back to watching the show.

It _was_ a lot warmer in the blanket, Steve had to admit. He'd been leaving the things all over the place for Bucky, but he hadn't even thought of using them himself -- he'd just filed it into the "solutions for Bucky" category in his head and then gone around being cold all the time. Which was, okay, pretty stupid.

As Bucky would no doubt tell him. Had just told him, really.

"You're a jerk too," Steve announced. "For the record."

One corner of Bucky's mouth quirked up. A hand snaked out of the blanket bundle to stab the volume button on the remote, turning up the TV, and then retreated back underneath the blanket.

Neither of them moved again for the rest of the afternoon.


End file.
